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Colorado moved a step closer to an election battle over abortion rights Thursday, when a proposal defining a fertilized human egg as a person was certified for the November ballot.

Secretary of State Mike Coffman said that supporters of the proposed state constitutional amendment turned in an estimated 103,000 valid signatures, far more than the 76,000 required.

Coffman's ruling sets up a potentially heated campaign over the measure, now designated Amendment 48.

Kristi Burton, the prime mover behind the measure, said that her group, Colorado for Equal Rights, will focus on Colorado voters who personally oppose abortion but don't want to impose their views on others.

Burton said polling shows that those voters make up about 20 percent of the electorate.

"Our job is to put the truth out there for the voters," she said. "Science is on our side."

But Crystal Clinkenbeard, a spokeswoman for the organization Protect Families Protect Choices, which opposes the measure, said, "Defining an egg as a person in our constitution and statutes isn't science-based and makes bad public policy."

The birth control argument is certainly not valid. The pill doesn't prevent a fertilized egg from implanting, it prevents the ovaries from releasing an egg to begin with. An IUD prevents the fertilized egg from implanting, and many women don't use it for that reason alone, not to mention the possiblity of the IUD perforating the uterus.

Condoms wouldn't be affected at all by this. They're cheap and easily obtained.

I for one am shocked! Are you insinuating that the left might just be making stuff up as scare tacics?! :eek:

Well, it would certainly prevent the destruction of embryos in embryonic stem cell research, but of course, the media never acknowledges that it's adult stem cells that have been in use for decades, with great success, while embryonic stem cell research remains, well, embryonic, with experiments showing very limited potential and tremendous down sides in the form of unpredictable reactions, side effects and just plain failure.

I assume this is just being done to create a test case for the Supreme Court.

There are a number of issues in play here. Many people are unaware of the fact that Colorado was the first state to legalize abortion in various instances. We've had a number of crimes in the state over the past 10 against pregnant women in which the unborn child died as a result of the attack but was never part of the subsequent case. Colorado is the home base for a number of family and right-to-life organizations. A growing number of voters believe that the political machine in the state (on both sides) is hopelessly broken and no longer represents the views of voters.